The Sabbath Pond in the Courtroom: Anonymous Tribunals, Form Without Substance, and the Right to Confront under Pakistan's Anti-Terrorism (Punjab Amendment) Bill 2026

Sabbath Pond Test II. This preprint extends the Sabbath Pond Test, an analytic device drawn from Qur'an 7:163–166 for detecting arrangements that preserve the form of a rule while defeating its substance, from Islamic finance to criminal procedure. It examines Section 21AAA of the Anti-Terrorism Act 1997, inserted by Bill No. 47 of 2026 of the Provincial Assembly of the Punjab (passed 31 August 2026), which lets an unnamed executive officer designate any case or class of cases a "special security case" in which the identities of judges, prosecutors, defence counsel, police officers and witnesses are concealed, the record is sealed, and the regime may extend to the appellate courts. The provision is tested against Pakistan's Constitution (Articles 10-A, 175(3), 143, 25, 2A and 227), the judicially-controlled protection that Sections 21 and 21AA of the same Act and the Punjab Witness Protection Act 2018 already provide, comparative fair-trial jurisprudence (UN Human Rights Committee, Inter-American and European Courts, House of Lords, US Supreme Court), and the classical Islamic law of testimony and legal devices (hiyal). A documented case study from a 2017 Anti-Terrorism Court judgment, in which the author was the acquitted accused, illustrates the class of harm anonymity would make undiscoverable. The author's position is declared. Files: the paper (PDF); Annex Index (PDF); Annex A, the attested judgment of the Anti-Terrorism Court No. II, Lahore, 24 October 2017, reproduced unaltered; Annex B, the Bill as published by the Provincial Assembly of the Punjab (its own .docx file, unaltered) with a dated capture of the Assembly's bill page, https://pap.gov.pk/bills/details/en/22/526, accessed 6 September 2026. Annexes A and B are public official records and are not subject to the author's licence. AI-assisted academic preprint. Written solely for research and scholarly purposes; not legal advice, not a religious ruling, and not a call to action by any person or body. See the Notice and the Disclaimer in the paper. Web edition: https://irshados.com/ebooks/sabbath-pond-test-ii-courtroom/